Young people need unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09280/1003448-109.stm

They've not been told what collective action can accomplish
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
By Michael Fedor and Jennifer Jannon

Young workers are among those hardest hit by the economic recession and the group least likely to have health insurance. We are shockingly likely to be living with our parents because we can't afford to pay rent -- let alone a mortgage. A recent study done by the AFL-CIO and Working America found 34 percent of workers under the age of 35 still living with parents, a number that jumped to 52 percent for those making less than $30,000 per year.

Young workers know that the answers to their struggles won't necessarily come from employers. Just 41 percent said they strongly trusted their employer to treat them fairly. Young adults, in other words, need the benefits of union membership more than anyone.

That's why, as young adults in the labor movement, we were pleased by the focus on young workers at the recent AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh.

The need to involve younger workers wasn't just given lip service. This convention saw the election of the first woman and the youngest AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer ever, Liz Shuler, 39. A powerful new voice in the labor movement, she told the convention, "It's not that today's young people don't like unions; it's just that they really don't know about us."

How true. In school, most of us weren't taught that America's working people, united in unions, fought to win weekends off, the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage and safe workplaces. Nor were we taught that union members now earn 30 percent more and are 52 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than nonunion workers. Or that for women and people of color, the best guarantee of equal pay for equal work is a union contract.

These omissions have done our generation a disservice by obscuring the power of collective action. Instead, we've been taught that progress comes from above and that our success should be measured by what we alone accomplish.

FULL story at link.

[stray cat]

1. jobs would even be helpful